This sadness, this numb
It is not poetic.
I cannot write about galaxy ridden veins
or fire seared eyes

This sadness, this emptiness
It is not beautiful
There will be no heroic sweeping away of broken princesses by
princes with cigarette clenched teeth
or ***** laced lips

This sadness, this gut-wrenching pain
Will not be daises in Marlboro boxes
It can't be unraveled threads sewed back
by an infinite but dysfunctional love

No, no.

This sadness isn't any of that.

This sadness, it's raw
It hurts to look at but it's torture to bear
People look away from this type of sadness
Because it sure as hell ain't pretty.
But what it is is real
This is the sadness that, once moved past, is never forgotten

It's worn like armor in battle
Like a coat of arms

This sadness makes you a **soldier

Faltering declarations of love
Floating like incense on our fingers
Like slime on moribund monuments
Like filth lingering on the dead
Like wasps on an infected wound
Like babies of bats
Kissing your gangrenous feet
Like hollowness of two hearts
Enclosed in a horrid infinity
Like lungs filled with black water
Like bones intertwined with each other
In a discomfort so immense
Like a cat choking on her mother's milk
Like a scar that heals and still exists
On our bodies like a curse
Like an air balloon that bursts in our chests
But doesn't **** us
And still the pain of our dying love
Is greater than all the ghastly metaphors
And we know we can't save it
So we have to let go of the dead fishes
We have to let go of the dead wishes

Leaning how to breathe
while still three thousand leagues under
the sea is a skill
I've learned is useful when you
need the air to say "I'm fine."

She gives him his eyes, she found them
Among some rubble, among some beetles

He gives her her skin
He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her
She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists
They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over her

He has assembled her spine, he cleaned each piece carefully
And sets them in perfect order
A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired
She leans back twisting this way and that, using it and laughing
Incredulous

Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them
So that his whole body lights up

And he has fashioned her new hips
With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, all shiningly oiled
He is polishing every part, he himself can hardly believe it

They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily
To test each new thing at each new step

And now she smoothes over him the plates of his skull
So that the joints are invisible

And now he connects her throat, her ******* and the pit of her stomach
With a single wire

She gives him his teeth, tying the the roots to the centrepin of his body

He sets the little circlets on her fingertips

She stiches his body here and there with steely purple silk

He oils the delicate cogs of her mouth

She inlays with deep cut scrolls the nape of his neck

He sinks into place the inside of her thighs

So, gasping with joy, with cries of wonderment
Like two gods of mud
Sprawling in the dirt, but with infinite care
They bring each other to perfection.

I could've loved you
a thousand times over
and a million sleeps under
my soft, pleading sheets.

In a field far away from here
I'd lay you down gently
and pick the thorns from your memory

wipe the leaves from your face
and the tears from your cheek
until the only thing left to feel
is me.

I'd read you poetry
and maybe even tell you a story
of this girl who showed me

that love is a mystery
bought out by long histories
I spoke to you delicacies
even my tongue didn't believe.
But now that you're not next to me
showering me with broken dreams
I think it's time to change my sheets.